Lake Point, Utah

Lake Point is a city on the eastern edge of northern Tooele County, Utah, United States. It is located 17 miles southwest of Salt Lake City International Airport and 11 miles north of Tooele, Utah. At its location on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake, the city is served by Interstate 80 and Utah State Route 36.

The community was originally settled in 1854 under the name of E.T. City, in honor of Ezra T. Benson. It was renamed Lake Point in 1923.

A 2021 feasibility study for the proposed Lake Point incorporation area indicated an estimated population of 2,599. During the 2021 United States elections, the residents of Lake Point voted to become a city with a five-member council; the first city council was then elected the following year.

Military Cartographers and Early Pioneers
John C. Frémont, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, was commissioned by the US Government to explore the Mexican territory west of the Louisiana Purchase with a special interest in the terrain and various routes that could link the Midwest to California. In the summer of 1843 Fremont took a smaller team from his men and veered off the Oregon Trail at Fort Hall to the Bear River into its terminus at the Great Salt Lake. He explored the lake on an eighteen-foot inflatable rubber boat loaded with provisions and produced a map of the lake and its surroundings.

From 1843-1846 Fremont made several expeditions which included a route south of the Great Salt Lake and eastward to the Humboldt River in Nevada. On January 1846, Fremont met with Lansford Hastings, another explorer military man who shared a passion for driving settlement in California. A year earlier, in 1845, Hastings published a popular book called "The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California" which contained a passage that said the quickest route to the San Francisco Bay was a diversion from Fort Hall on the Oregon Trail "...bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake". Fremont's detailed explanations of his most recent expedition south of the Great Salt Lake was received with much enthusiasm by Hastings. In 1846 Fremont would continue to publish details of his explorations through Utah and Nevada and Hastings set out with teams of men in recruiting settlers to use the Hastings Cutoff. Many of the settlers who tried the new route found it very challenging but did make it to their destinations.

The Donner Party were numbered among these same initial pioneers on the Hastings Cutoff, but were slowed down for a variety of reasons including road building activities. Journal entries and interviews describe the Donner Party meeting the "Hastings Trail" on the south side of the Great Salt Lake in August 1846. In later interviews Donner Party member, Reed, was quoted multiple times saying that they had met Lansford Hastings near the landmark (on the eastern border of Lake Point) known as Black Rock and that they were the ones who had given the rock its name. In late August, the Donner Party crossed a field from the Great Salt Lake to a spring at the point of the lake mountain. The location of this camp is present day Emigration Park in Lake Point with a Donner Party Trail historical marker. The remainder of the Donner Party's passage through the Hastings Cuttoff would become infamous in highlighting the route's lack of water, its grueling heat, and unforgiving winter. Their later depravations and loss became a warning to all travelers.

Brigham Young had studied the published maps and articles written by John Fremont which greatly influenced his route and destination for a new Mormon settlement. The Brigham Young led the first Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley almost a year after the Donner Party first arrived. On July 27, 1847, just 3 days later, Brigham Young and 16 other men set out to examine the Hasting Cutoff trail along the south side of the lake and to evaluate the water, soil, timber, and other natural resources of Tooele Valley. No bold plans for the valley materialized in that expedition but it was concluded that there was potential for pastorage.

Similar to John Fremont, the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers ordered Captain Howard Stansbury to take his team to the Salt Lake Valley to gain better understanding of the land around the Great Salt Lake for purposes of supply and travel routes, and to document resources, indigenous peoples, and Mormon settlements. In November 1849, Stansbury and his team had made a trip around the Great Salt Lake and came into the Tooele Valley. Their team had cattle and constructed an adobe structure for those watching the herd. The structure made an impression because it was one of the first known buildings in the valley. The location made an impression as well because it was adjacent to a large rock tower that had already served as a landmark for travelers. The rock tower became known as Adobe Rock.

E.T. City
Pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Lake Point on July 27, 1847. The team of men included Brigham Young and Orson Pratt. Pratt wrote in his journal that "We continued on about 4 miles further [beyond Black Rock], when we reached a valley putting up to the southward from the lake." Very little happened for two years from that initial visitation, Mormon settlers did travel the area and perhaps dwelled in an official capacity, but the Tooele Valley wasn't formally organized as a colony for members of the Church until Apostle Ezra T. Benson hired men to build mills and watch his cattle in the valley. Cyrus and Juda Tolman along with Phineas R. Wright were brought in to build saw mills and a grist mill. And John Rowberry and Robert Skelton followed shortly after on December 1849 to winter Benson's cattle. When the 1850 census was taken a year and a half later, all 5 men and their families were accounted for as living in Settlement Canyon in what is now Tooele City.

On April 24, 1850 Ezra T. Benson visited the new settlement and organized the first LDS branch with Rowberry as Bishop. By late Spring and Summer of that year more Mormon settlers came into the valley including Peter Maughan and his family. Tooele County was organized on April, 1851 with Peter Maughan appointed to the position of County Clerk. In 1852 Settlement Canyon Fort, which included Peter Maughan's home, was dissembled and moved closer to present day city center in Tooele. On November 1853, Maughan, Rowberry, and Bates were appointed a committee to both "...locate E.T. City and for building a dam at Rock Springs [Adobe Springs Creek]." In 1854 $700 was expended to build the dam, which failed because the water seeped through an underground passage so that water would not rise. The committee then had to spend an additional $300 to bring water from Twin Springs to the location of the new settlement; Twin Springs was the same source of water for the Benson Grist Mill which was completed that same year. In August 1854 the Maughan house was dissembled and moved for a second time, now to the location that was selected for E.T. City. There were others who joined him who built small houses along the north-south road. On October 1854, Maughan was appointed as the Presiding Elder over E.T. City. According to the Utah Centennial County History Series, E.T. City was a precinct named after Ezra Taft Benson that extended from the Benson Grist Mill to E.T. Hill (Adobe Rock), and all the way over to Black Rock (Great Salt Lake). This was formalized in 1855 by Ezra Taft Benson who represented Tooele County in the Utah Territorial Legislature.

The first year of farming in E.T. City in 1855, the crops showed great promise of reaching maturity until they were destroyed by a massive swarm of grasshoppers. In 1856 the watering of their crops brought out saleratus in the soil that destroyed most of that year's harvest. Upon hearing the plight of the people in the new settlement, Brigham Young permitted a committee of 6 men led by Maughan to explore Cache Valley for a new location. They departed on July 21, 1856 and returned home safely. In late August, Brigham Young allowed for any man and his family to leave E.T. City to go with Peter Maughan to settle in Cache Valley. Some were glad to do so. They arrived at their new location in September of that same year and built Maughan's Fort which became Wellsville, Utah. In 1860, Ezra T. Benson joined Maughan to direct religious affairs and assist in settling the Cache Valley area.

The first meetinghouse of the LDS branch was built in 1857, a small log building with a rough board floor, dirt roof, and two windows.

The branch's population was listed as 97 in 1868 ("and some gentile families"); by then the E.T. Irrigation Company had been formed, a canal delivered irrigation water from the Mill Pond, a regular mail run existed between E.T. City and Richville.

An LDS Church meetinghouse built of rock was completed in 1884. It was also used as an elementary school until 1894, when a separate schoolhouse was constructed.

The rock LDS chapel was replaced in November 1985 by a modern brick-faced building a half-mile south of the previous building.

Tourism and The Utah Western Railway


Bathing in the Great Salt Lake was a popular recreational activity from the first arrival of the Mormon Pioneers. In 1860, LDS Apostle Heber C. Kimball built a rock ranch house next to the Black Rock landmark which had become a very popular location for bathing in the lake. The home had bath houses used for leisure and entraining guests. It became the first of many built tourist attractions along the Great Salt Lake. Heber C. Kimball died 8 years later in 1868, but his son Heber P. Kimball, John Willard Young (the third son of Brigham Young), and Dr. Jeter Clinton would bring an unprecedented level of resort and transportation investment to the Lake Point area.

In 1869, Brigham Young tasked John W. Young with the formation and construction of the Utah Central Railroad which would connect Salt Lake City to the first transcontinental railroad in Ogden. The line was completed in January 1870. One of the stops on the line was a station called Lake Side. Adjacent to this station was the Lake Side resort which opened June of that same year.

Less than a year later, in the spring of 1871, Jeter Clinton's Lake House was built at a location called Clinton's Landing in Lake Point. From Young's Lake Side resort one could pay 25-cents "to ride on the City of Corinne, a steamboat, going to Lake Point on the south shore". Within 4 years, and two railroad companies later, John W. Young became president of the newly formed Utah Western Railway and Heber P. Kimball treasurer and superintendent of construction. On February 7, 1875 they connected Salt Lake City to a train stop called Lake Point, adjacent to this station was Clinton’s new three story Lake Point Hotel with bath houses and a dock prepared to receive the City of Corinne Steamboat. In 1877 John Muir wrote, "Lake Point is only an hour or two from the city, and has hotel accommodations and a steamboat for excursions; and then, besides the bracing waters, the climate is delightful...The crystal brightness of the water, the wild flowers, and the lovely mountain scenery make this a favorite summer resort for pleasure and health seekers. Numerous excursion trains are run from the city, and parties, some of them numbering upwards of a thousand, come to bathe, and dance, and roam the flowery hillsides together".

The success of the Lake Point brand surrounding both the railroad stop and the resort pulled the community's identity into its gravity. The town was named E.T. City in the census on one occasion in the decade that it was first settled, but that name lost out to Lake Point in identifying the town to a majority of outsiders looking to interact with the settlement in terms of labels on maps, post office naming, rail stops, and later highway signage. At a parochial level, the townspeople in the settlement would continue to identify their community as the E.T. Ward.

Early railroading was very difficult with many smaller railroads ultimately folding and becoming part of larger railroad companies. On September 16, 1877 the Utah Western Railway completed its initial buildout to receive freight from Stockton, Utah, but the company was losing money. It ultimately sold under foreclosure on November 3, 1880 and rebranded into the Utah & Nevada Railway with further consolidation and renaming in its future. Operating a successful resort on the Great Salt Lake was perhaps just as difficult of an endeavor. The Lake Point Resort had to contend with demand for its product becoming too large for its scale. And thus competition with a newer and larger resorts further up the eastern shore. The second challenge it had to face was drastically varying lake levels that left the facilities far away from the water's edge.

In 1892 the Clinton property was sold to the Buffalo Park Land Company, who envisioned a large resort on the area. They mapped streets, planted trees, imported buffalo, and began building cabins. However, the venture did not succeed, and the remaining buffalo became the nucleus of the buffalo herd on nearby Antelope Island.

Geography


"Looking southward from the south end of Salt Lake, the two northmost peaks of the Oquirrh Range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky without any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a few weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray, sagey plains circle around their bases, and up to a height of a thousand feet or more their sides are tinged with purple, which I afterwards found is produced by a close growth of dwarf oak just coming into leaf. Higher you may detect faint tintings of green on a gray ground, from young grasses and sedges; then come the dark pine woods filling glacial hollows, and over all the smooth crown of snow."